


My Arms Will Hold You

by hazeleyedwriter



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie), M/M, Not A Fix-It, Other, Post-Canon, my attempt to give Steve (and myself) a little closure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:42:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21845383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hazeleyedwriter/pseuds/hazeleyedwriter
Summary: Steve Rogers has returned the infinity stones to their rightful timelines, and has one last Pym Particle that can take him further into the past and back to the future. He chooses a very specific date: March 10th, 1934. But it's not to see Bucky-- it's to see his mother, one last time.AKA my friends and I were sad about Steve and Sarah and I decided to write this in one sitting. It's not a true fix-it, but I wanted to explore what it might be like if Steve had gone back to visit his mom and then gone back to 2023 rather than the bs we really got at the end of endgame. (Also let's all just pretend that Steve didn't shave because Nomad is the look we all deserved to see more of.)This is dedicated to my buds, Mae and Amanda :D
Relationships: Steve Rogers & Sarah Rogers, Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes
Comments: 10
Kudos: 103





	My Arms Will Hold You

Steve knows the exact date to go to. He’s not ready for this, at all, but he’s been given a chance to speak with her again and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t take it. So Steve sets his quantum bracelet and takes a deep breath, and rematerializes in Brooklyn, March 10, 1934. He knows that his past-self will be out with past-Bucky, celebrating the latter boy’s birthday. There won’t be a need for any awkward interactions this way.

He finds his way back to the old tenement, steps up to the front door and knocks, hard. Steve hears the lock turn, and a thin woman with her long blonde hair pulled back into a tight bun opens the door. She’s still in her nurse’s uniform.

“Can I help you?” She asks. They say that your mother’s voice is the voice you could recognize anywhere; it was the first voice you ever heard and even if you haven’t heard it in decades you would know who was speaking immediately. This is true for Steve.

“Hey, Ma.” Steve greets. He knows she won’t recognize him— he has a dark brown beard now, and his hair is longer than he kept it while she was alive. And he’s much, much older now.

Confusion graces her face for a split second before recognition lights her eyes.

“Steven?” She says, almost a whisper. He nods. She opens the door wider and beckons him in.

He recognizes the smell right away: there’s a fire in the fireplace, and she has a pot of stew on the stove. It looks like she’s been mending a pair of pants, too, and the iron sits at the ready next to the stew. It’s home. Steve realizes he’s been chasing that smell for the last seventy years, trying to recreate the feeling the old apartment used to give him. Nothing has worked. Maybe home was a thing of the past. But he knows he couldn’t, and shouldn’t, stay. He couldn’t watch her die a second time, and he knows the illness is coming later that year.

Sarah walks to the small dining table and moves the pants and sewing kit. She moves out the chair that Steve usually sits in and gestures to him, sitting down herself.

“Are you hungry, son?” She asks. Steve isn’t, not really, but he would never turn down his mother’s stew. So he nods and says, “I could eat.” And this makes her laugh. And her laugh is the most beautiful sound he’s ever heard, and will ever hear. If the smell of their apartment could bring tears to his eyes, her laugh threatens to spill them and he knows by the end of his visit they will have made tracks down his cheeks.

“You always could,” is her response. She gets up from her spot at the table and as she’s ladling stew into a bowl Steve gets a sudden burst of courage.

“How are you, ma?” He asks. Sarah looks over at him, giving him That Look: That Look that tells him what it’s always told him, ‘of course you know, Steven.’ But she humors him, too.

“I’m okay. Tired and worried, but that isn’t new, you know that.” He knows exactly why she’s tired, and why she’s worried, and he wishes he wasn’t the cause. But he knows that if he ever apologized she would wave it away with a gesture of her hand and say, “son, there is absolutely no reason for you to apologize,” like she did so many times.

“The real question, my dear, is how are you?” She stands in front of him this time, taking in his appearance and watching him eat, making sure he gets enough. It’s strange; he’s so much older than she is, so much bigger than she’s ever seen him, and yet he is still her baby boy, born on a sunny July day with golden hair and a furrowed brow that even time could never smooth.

“I always get back up,” is what Steve decides to tell her. She knows what he means without him having to explain. He’s not doing well. He doesn’t want her to worry more. He gets back up no matter what life throws at him, no matter how hard breathing and putting one foot in front of the other can get. Sarah moves in closer to him and cups his cheek.

“The future has not been kind to you, has it?” She asks. Steve closes his eyes and focuses on her warm hand on his cheek. He slowly shakes his head.

“Tell me everything, Steven.” Her voice is strong but compassionate, commanding and gentle all at the same time.

And so he does. He tells her about Bucky getting drafted, about Project Rebirth, about the Howling Commandos and Bucky’s deaths and how he couldn’t save him. He tells her about the ice, and the defrosting, about the battle of New York, and the Winter Soldier. He tells her about Thanos, about losing Bucky again and again, about how he’s finally got him back and how he’s on one last mission. By the end of it all he finally takes a deep breath.

Somewhere around telling her about 2014 his tears finally broke through. Sarah bends down and pulls him in close. His mother isn’t a very tall woman, at least not compared to serumed Steve, so his head comes up to her chest when he’s sat in the chair, and she holds him while he cries. He cries and feels seventy years worth of pain and suffering. He cries like he did the night after Bucky fell from the train, and the night after he’d been dusted. Steve Rogers does not usually let other people see him cry, though.

But in his mother’s kitchen, in the apartment he still calls home, he lets her see him cry, and he lets himself feel for the first time in five years. Sarah Rogers holds her boy as close as she can. She rubs his back and makes a sshh-ing noise with her mouth, all while her free hand cards through his thick hair. She’s seen her son cry before. But never like this. And she knows that he needs to, God does he need to, and so she holds him until he stops, and gasps for air. When Steve has stopped crying, he pulls his face away from her body and looks up into her blue eyes. His face is red and his eyes are puffy and she smiles softly at him.

“Steven, I am so proud of you. I always have been, and I always will be,” she says. Her voice is firm but gentle again, like she’s stating the most obvious fact but feels the need to remind him.

“Your stew is cold, I’ll reheat it for you,” she says as she pats his tear stained cheek. She puts what was left of his bowl back into the pot, stirs, and ladles more out. Once he’s finished Steve looks up at his mother.

“I love you, ma,” he says, voice quivering and tears pricking his eyes again.

“I love you too, Steven.” She’s standing close again, and continues, “I think it’s time to go, darling.”

Steve has seen his mother cry on very few occasions, but now might just be another. He doesn’t want to leave. He wants to stay here, in her kitchen, with her and her cooking, forever. For as long as the serum keeps him alive. But he knows that just won’t do. He knows that, even if this right here will always be his home, he’s needed in the future and in turn he needs the future as well. He has Bucky back, after all. Steve also knows that if he stays here for too long, his past self will come back and past-Bucky might too. And he knows he shouldn’t see them.

“I wish you could stay too,” Sarah says, reading his mind.

“I love you,” he says again. And then he taps his quantum bracelet and enters in April, 2023.

“Give Bucky my best,” Sarah says. Steve nods.

And then he rematerializes 80 years in the future. Steve feels the platform beneath his feet and takes a deep breath, this one filling his nose with the smell of pine trees and the nearby lake. Not nearly close to the smell of home, but he opens his eyes anyway. Bucky is the first person he sees. Steve isn’t quite sure but he thinks he can see relief flash across Bucky’s face, quickly replaced by a smile. He gets off the platform and walks over, not stopping to talk, but only stopping once he has both of his arms wrapped around Bucky.

“I saw her, Buck. I went back to see her one last time, on your birthday in ‘34,” Steve says into his shoulder. Bucky chuckles softly. He remembers that birthday, even after all these years. It’s the reason “seventeen” was one of the Winter Soldier’s trigger words.

“How was she?” Bucky asks. Even though he knows. Even though he can also remember how she greeted them once they got back from Coney Island, and how she had a knowing look on her face but didn’t say anything. She had waited for them to tell her.

“She was like I remember her,” is all Steve says. “But she did tell me to give you her best,” he continues. And that makes Bucky laugh even more, even if it is wetter than his chuckle.

“She always said you were her best,” Bucky says, gripping Steve tighter.

**Author's Note:**

> (the title comes from the song You'll Be In My Heart by Phil Collins)
> 
> I hope I didn’t cause too much pain :)


End file.
